Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Shoba Narayan

MONSOON DIARY weaves a fascinating food narrative that combines authentic vegetarian recipes from South India with tales from Shoba Narayan's life, stories of her delightfully eccentric family, and reflections on Indian culture. 
 
Shoba recounts her childhood in South India, a portrait of small-town life richly populated by characters like the flower woman who brings jasmine for the gods, the milkman who names his cows after his wives, and the iron-man who picks up red-hot coals with his bare hands. Food is so important to her family that when Shoba wins a scholarship to study in America, they only agree to let her go if she prepares a successful banquet. She returns home to an arranged marriage - to her surprise, the family have chosen well - and later there are visits from her many relatives, old and new, to her home in New York City. 
 
In MONSOON DIARY, Shoba Narayan's culinary talent is matched by stories as varied as Indian spices - at times pungent, mellow, piquant and sweet. Her characters, like Shoba herself, have a thing or two to say about cooking and about life.

Monsoon Diary

Reveries And Recipes From South India

Robbie Coltrane

Tired of the endless tarmac and Little Chefs, and keen to see more on his travels than the tail-lights of the car in front of him, Robbie Coltrane has set himself quite a challenge. Instead of scaling the Himalayas, trekking across the Antarctic or hacking through the Brazilian rainforest, he has decided to explore strange and exotic areas that are somewhat closer to home. Armed only with a map, an inquisitive mind and one of his favourite classic cars - a Carmen-red drophead Jaguar XK150S - he ventures off the beaten track and on to the B-roads of deepest, darkest Britain. 
 
Travelling from London to Glasgow in search of the impressive, the eccentric and, sometimes, the downright ridiculous, Robbie's journey takes us through stunning countryside into the heart of Great Britain. From wing walking in Gloucestershire and bottle kicking in Leicestershire to pigeon fancying in Sunderland and ale brewing in Stirling, Robbie delves deep into our local communities to uncover strange festivals, inspirational people and treasured traditions that reveal exactly what it is that makes our country so incredible, so bizarre and so, well, British ...

Robbie Coltrane's B-Road Britain

Lucy Irvine

Eighteen years later, in 1999, Lucy took her three children to the farthest corner of the Solomons to live for a year on remote Pigeon Island. This time the invitation had come from an intrepid eighty-year-old, Diana Hepworth, who, in 1947, set sail from England and embarked on a hazardous journey to find a faraway paradise where she and her husband Tom could raise a family. 
 
Faraway is the fascinating tale of two extraordinary worlds - 'primitive' and modern 'colonial' - in which tragedy, heroism, danger and pure joy combine in one remarkable story. This is a classic account by a writer who has dug deep into her psyche to illuminate the darkest reaches of our own.

Faraway

J Maarten Troost

Fantasized about quitting the 9-5? Walking away from credit card debt and student loans? Think living in the South Pacific for two years sounds like a perfect solution and perhaps even a winning idea for your first novel? Maarten Troost does just that, setting up as a devil-may-care islander while his girlfriend, Sylvia, gets to work on saving the planet, or at least a little part of it on an end-of-the-world atoll, Tarawa. 
Life on Tarawa resembles not so much paradise as a theatre of the absurd where planes fly with the aid of masking tape, Coconut Stalinism prevails as national government and Sylvia is co-opted by the CIA to spy on the Chinese. But abandoning continental hang-ups like barbequeing the local dogs and watching on as international industrial fishing trawlers plunder the world's richest tuna supply aren't so easy. Perhaps only by following the locals and letting go, one just might find a better way to live...

The Sex Lives Of Cannibals

Lorraine Kelly

From childhood family day trips to Loch Lomond, to her days as TVam&rsquo;s roving correspondent, Lorraine Kelly has covered the length and breadth of Scotland. But certain special places tug at her heartstrings and lure her back time and time again. Travelling to the highlands and islands and all her favourite places in between, this is Lorraine&rsquo;s personal journey around her beautiful and beguiling country. 
 
Each and every stop gives rise to fascinating stories and memories along the way, from her adopted home of Dundee to the wild and remote islands of St Kilda. She revisits childhood haunts in Glasgow, indulges in a spot of whisky-tasting on the island of Islay and reveals what led her to once arrive in Edinburgh pushing a pram and wearing a pair of rollerskates. She rediscovers the joys of the natural wilderness in the Highlands, visits a dramatic Viking fire festival in Shetland and recalls the week she and her family spent hunting the Loch Ness monster . . . 
 
Beautifully illustrated with stunning original photographs, Lorraine Kelly&rsquo;s Scotland is a celebration of a gloriously diverse country with a deep and rich heritage, told with all Lorraine&rsquo;s characteristic warmth and humour.

Lorraine Kelly's Scotland

David Monagan

Where is Ireland's soul? This is the question that surface time and again in Ireland Unhinged, a searching, sometimes scathing, often hilarious journey through a country that in the space of a few years has fallen from the dizzy heights of the 'bouncy-castle' boom to the bewildering depths of the crash. 
Ireland Unhinged is a story of reverse emigration to Cork City and then rural Waterford, from cosy US confines to the true Wild West of these last years. David Monagan's sharp eye pinpoints the excesses and absurdities of modern Ireland. But his real search is for the enduring essence of his adopted country, as revealed in his meetings with literary legends, with witches and monks, with property developers and gnomic farmers. 
Itis a riveting memoir of a family adapting to a strange land, and an unflinching portrait of Ireland today.

Ireland Unhinged

Rich Smith

When you've broken 25 of the USA's most absurd laws, what do you do next? If you're Rich Smith, you return to the scene of the crime, and then: 
 
Attend the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, which includes such treats as the Hobo bake sale, a giant parade, a pie and ice-cream social and the 'cheerleader omelette breakfast' 
 
Watch the convicts compete in The Prison Rodeo at Louisiana State Penitentiary. 
 
Browse for treasures at the World's Longest Yardsale, held each August along 630 miles of Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky 
 
Expose yourself at the Amtrak Mooning in Orange County, California. This year sees the 28th annual mooning of Amtrak. After 8pm, night mooning starts. Mooners are advised to: 'bring a torch with plenty of batteries...Night mooning is better because it is less crowded, cooler temperature, and more authentic'. 
 
Compete in the Redneck Games, in Buckeye Park, Georgia, where eager participants engage in such high-brow events as the mudpit belly flop, the armpit serenade, and bobbing for pig's feet.

Around The Weird In 80 Days

Paul Rosolie

Madre de Dios – ‘Mother of God’ – is a place where the Andean Cloud Forest intermingles with the steaming tropical jungle at the head of the Amazon river. Here can be found the greatest proliferation of living species that has ever existed on Earth, ever. And it is a place which is now under grave threat. 
 
Paul Rosolie has travelled to the very heart of this wilderness in search of rare flora and fauna. His adventures – with giant anacondas, huge cayman, the mighty jaguar and one very small anteater – are by turn thrilling, terrifying and revelatory. Paul crosses some of the world’s harshest terrain and encounters some of its most extreme weather conditions. He battles with life-threatening tropical diseases and the extreme mental challenges presented by being alone in the heart of the jungle. 
 
Mother of God is an astonishing tale of adventure and survival, set in one of the world’s few remaining truly wild places. It’s a story of nature, red in tooth and claw, and how we must both respect its awesome power and protect its extraordinary glory.

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